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I’m starting to react a bit whenever I see this word. It’s getting to bear the same tint as “quantum” in all those incomprehensible sciency blatherings in advertisements for unlikely products. I realise it’s mainly due to my own inadequacies in properly evaluating such matters, but it does grate a bit.

See what you’ve done? I wandered over to Curry’s “Climate [but mostly..] etc”, and now I need to read some Hawking to counteract the Stupid. More credit to Steve Easterbrook, Bart, Eli, and others for their valiant efforts to keep her from jumping over the edge after her numpties, but really, it’s all pearls before swine.

The same nonsense is surfacing unchallenged there, as infected the Marohasy Bog and that infects the Codling New Bog. In my book, whenever a blogmaster doesn’t automatically and hastily disavow him-/herself from claims such as the non-hydrogen sun theory, there is no chance that they really are playing in the scientific sandpit any longer.

I still can’t make up my mind if “Climate que” is Curry’s interpretation of performance art, or of the internet version of installation art. Whichever is the fact of the matter, an appropriate sub-title would be “A Fly on Honeydew: or the Capture of the Demise of a Repuation”.

The more Curry responds to her fawning crowd, the more it is apparent that she is rolling herself in the relentless sticky grip of the glistening tentacles of credibility seppuku.

I was in two minds about where this should go given the recent Wegman posts. It seems that Prof Curry has taken a leaf from Wegman, which might explain her positive citing of Wegman.

This is from her ‘Consensus’ post.

A poster noted her mangling of a Hulme and Mahony paper;

JC –

Hulme and Mahoney argue that the consensus approach has been a source of both strength and vulnerability for the IPCC: while the IPCC consensus approach has been effective in communicating climate science to policy makers, it has marginalized dissenting voices.

What they actually said –

Understanding consensus as a process of ‘truth creation’ (or the more nuanced ‘knowledge production’) which marginalises dissenting voices – as has frequently been portrayed by some of the IPCC’s critics (see Edwards & Schneider, 2001; Petersen, 2010) – does not do justice to the process.

Which made me have a bit of a look around that section of H&M. And what do we find?

Here’s Curry sentance preceding her cite and mis-paraphrase of H&M;

The IPCC’s consensus approach has been largely driven by the desire to communicate climate science coherently to a wide spectrum of policy users. The IPCC consensus building process is an exercise in collective judgment about subjective Bayesian likelihoods in areas of uncertain knowledge

And here’s H&M (p.10);

Equally, as Yearley (2009) explains, IPCC consensus-making is an exercise in collective judgement about subjective (or Bayesian) likelihoods in areas of uncertain knowledge. Consensus-making in the IPCC has been largely driven by the desire to communicate climate science coherently to a wide spectrum of policy users

Or, to make it a bit clearer;

(H&M)- “…IPCC consensus-making is an exercise in collective judgement about subjective (or Bayesian) likelihoods in areas of uncertain knowledge.”

JC – “The IPCC consensus building process is an exercise in collective judgment about subjective Bayesian likelihoods in areas of uncertain knowledge.”

(H&M)- “Consensus-making in the IPCC has been largely driven by the desire to communicate climate science coherently to a wide spectrum of policy users.”

JC – “The IPCC’s consensus approach has been largely driven by the desire to communicate climate science coherently to a wide spectrum of policy users.”

My feeling is that she’s so committed to this politeness “position” she’s taken that she can’t see the pitfalls.

Anyone with any judgement might allow a couple of tries from the serial nutters, but you do have to cut them off at some point. She studiously avoids saying or doing anything about the seriously weird, but allows or encourages uninformed or negative comments about worthwhile contributors.

If you check back to her original ‘Welcome’ post and examine the list of people she’d like to encourage as part of the discussion, she’s not doing a lot to welcome or to hold on to people with real expertise to offer. Exactly the people she lists first as desirable contributors.